25th July 1945
Pages from 'PUNCH'
Cartoon from PUNCH magazine 25th July 1945. Hermann Göring sits with Joachim von Ribbentrop as they contemplate their future.
The caption reads
AT THE CRIME CLUB
"I wonder if they'll give us time to write our memoirs?"
Göring
from Wikipedia:
Göring made an appeal asking to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused. He committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged.
Speculation as to how Göring obtained the poison holds that US Army lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis, who was stationed at the trials, retrieved the capsules from their hiding place among Göring's confiscated personal effects and passed them to Göring, who had earlier presented Wheelis with his gold watch, pen, and cigarette case. In 2005, former US Army private Herbert Lee Stivers, who served in the 1st Infantry Division's 26th Infantry Regiment—the honour guard for the Nuremberg Trials—claimed he gave Göring 'medicine' hidden inside a fountain pen that a German woman had asked him to smuggle into the prison. Stivers later said that he did not know what was in the pill until after Göring's suicide.
Ribbentrop
From Wikipedia:
On 16th October 1946, Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged, after Göring committed suicide just before his scheduled execution. The hangman was U.S. Master Sergeant John C. Woods. Ribbentrop was escorted up the 13 steps of the gallows and asked if he had any final words. He said: "God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world." Nuremberg Prison Commandant Burton C. Andrus later recalled that Ribbentrop turned to the prison's Lutheran chaplain, Henry F. Gerecke, immediately before the hood was placed over his head and then he whispered, "I'll see you again." His body, like those of the other nine executed men and of the suicide Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and his ashes were scattered in the river Isar.
Note: Between 25th August and 23rd September 1946 Ribbentrop wrote his memoirs, published as 'The Ribbontrop Memoirs', Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954.
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